1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dynamic reconfigurable device and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, shortening a design period of the LSI (Large Scale Integration) has increasingly been demanded, and as one solution for shortening the LSI design period, attention has been paid to dynamic reconfigurable devices (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H11-167556).
A dynamic reconfigurable device is comprised of an LSI into which a plurality of processing units (processing elements) each having a computing unit (ALU) are incorporated. With the dynamic reconfigurable device, even when the device is in operation, ALU control in each processing element and connections between the processing elements can be switched dynamically (during LSI operation).
Since being configured such that the circuit change is made in units of processing element (PE), the dynamic reconfigurable device requires less configuration information for making the circuit change and circuits for use for a device configuration change, which are simple in construction. This makes it possible to change the configuration information at high speed.
Furthermore, the dynamic reconfigurable device can be made compatible to a plurality of applications by dynamically switch circuits within the device during the execution of any application. As a typical dynamic reconfigurable device, there have been known DAPDNA manufactured by IP Flex Inc. and DRP manufactured at NEC Corporation both of which include several hundred processing elements and have high processing ability.
However, processing must be discontinued in a case where an error is generated in configuration information (context) when the dynamic reconfigurable device is in operation after LSI fabrication.